Hebrew Language Charter Schools: Who Knew?

The language spread of Hebrew in the United States according to U. S. Census 2000 and other resources interpreted by research of U. S. ENGLISH Foundation, percentage of home speakers, via Wikimedia Commons

A Hebrew language charter school won approval last week to open in Harlem. In April, Washington, D.C., approved its first Hebrew language charter school. In March, San Diego approved one for a September 2012 opening. There is a Hebrew language charter school movement afoot. When I wrote my last post, on teaching identity in traditional public schools, I had no idea how current the Hebrew charter school issue would turn out to be. I obviously hadn’t been keeping up with Jewish Week.

I bring up this movement not because I have an opinion as to whether it’s good or evil, but because (to my mind, at least) it raises interesting questions not just about public schooling and who charter schools are meant to serve, but more specifically about:

• the ways in which the charter school movement parallels the big sort, the geographic clustering of like-minded people – people with similar political beliefs and values – that some argue is tearing America apart
• what’s happening to the role American public schools have long played in assimilating the children of immigrants (Antero Pietila, author of Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City, brought up this topic in this comment on my last post.)
• what happens when charter schools – quasi-public, quasi-private institutions – become an out for independent schools that are incapable of sustaining their operations through tuition and fundraising

What follows is a set of links to articles and websites meant to give anyone new to the subject of Hebrew charter schools a running start. I’ve divided them by location.

New York City 

1. Sara Berman, 35, Hebrew charter school pioneer, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, June 15, 2010 New Yorker
   Sara Berman founded the first Hebrew language charter school in New York City and now runs the Hebrew Charter School Center. Berman’s father is Michael Steinhardt, a philanthropist who made his money in hedge funds. He is an atheist, but he backs Birthright Israel and other Jewish organizations. (In our secular age, you don’t have to believe in God to be Jewish.) Her background is much like mine – New York City independent schools followed by the Ivy League. She sends her kids (she has six) to the yeshiva where I went through sixth grade. I met her after a panel she was on at the PEJE conference in 2010, at which she introduced the Hebrew charter she founded in Brooklyn. She was unfazed by angry representatives of Jewish day schools in Florida who bore witness to significant drops in enrollment when Hebrew charter schools emerged on the scene. She is on a mission.
2. Here is the proposal from the Harlem Hebrew folks. I won’t say anything about it except that the leading is a tad tight: http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/documents/HHLACSAppRedacted.pdf. The website: Harlem Hebrew Charter School.
3. A new Hebrew Charter School approved for NYC District 3 in Harlem! Alina Adams, examiner.com, June 21, 2012 This is an excited post from a mom who is well-informed of the work of Sara Berman and the Hebrew Charter School Center. The mom sends her child to a Jewish day school, but she would consider Harlem Hebrew if she could.
4. Hebrew Language Charter School Approved for Harlem, JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency), The Times of Israel, June  21, 2012, originally published as Hebrew-language charter school in N.Y.’s Harlem gets go-ahead, JTA website, June 20, 2012
5. Harlem Hebrew Charter Ok’ed, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, June 19, 2012
6. Hebrew School: The Hebrew Language Academy, New York City’s first Hebrew-language charter school, opened two years ago. Now its backers – including financier Michael Steinhardt – want to replicate the model nationwide, Anna Phillips, Tablet, March 9, 2011
7. Outcry over plan for Hebrew language school in Harlem, Michael J. Feeney, New York Daily News, March 3, 2011

Northern New Jersey

1. Hebrew Charter School Seeking Approval for Teaneck Location School files application for space on Galway Place, Noah Cohen, Teaneck Patch, June 14, 2012
   This article is about Shalom Academy’s struggle to find a building.
2. Hebrew charter school prevails in state Supreme Court (Decision ends dispute with East Brunswick Board of Education), Debra Rubin, New Jersey Jewish News, April 3, 2012
   This is on Hatikvah International Academy Hebrew charter school.
3. Hatikvah Charter Still Facing Legal Challenges, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, January 31, 2012 This article is on much more than Hatikvah. It also covers Tikun Olam, a proposed high school that does not have the backing of the Hebrew Charter School Center. Its application for charter was rejected multiple times. Still, they received a $600,000 grant from the federal government for the project, as discussed in this next link:
4. Rejected 3 Times, School May Still Open Soon, and With a Grant, Too, Michael Winerip, New York Times, January 8, 2012

San Diego, California

1. Kavod Elementary will open in fall 2012. Their website has stock photography of blond and brown children in a school setting together. Given that the Brooklyn Hebrew charter on which it is modeled is around 40 percent minority, this dream may be realized.
2. The RosenRant This is a blog by one of the school’s founders, Michael Rosen. (I think all the founders are Jewish.)
3. New Hebrew Charter School Approved in San Diego, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, March 28, 2012
4. Kol Ha Kavod Moment for San Diego Charter, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, April 17, 2012 (Is it me, or has Julie Wiener become completely sold on the Jewish, er, Hebrew charter school trend over the years?)

Washington, D.C.

1. Hebrew Charter School Approved in D.C., JTA, Jewish Daily Forward, April 24, 2012 Originally published by JTA as Hebrew-language charter school gets OK in D.C.
2. Sela, a Hebrew language charter school, will strengthen D.C. Jewish community, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, Washington Post (Opinion), June 24, 2012 (This rabbi is looking to populate his after school programs with the children of secularly minded Jewish parents, if you ask me.)
3. Hebrew Charter Schools Focus on Israel; New Crop of Public Schools Groom Generation of Advocates, Nathan Guttman and Naomi Zeveloff, Forward, May 8, 2012 – The leap from charter school founding to advocacy for Israel isn’t so far fetched given the connection between Modern Hebrew and Zionism.

South Florida

1. Ben Gamla charter school website  Here’s the website of the first Hebrew charter school in the country, which opened when a private Jewish day school in the neighborhood closed. An estimated 80 percent of the private school’s attendees enrolled in the charter school. It’s located in Hollywood, Fl.
2. Hebrew Charter School as Growth Industry: Former Florida Rep. Peter Deutsch’s burgeoning network of schools is toeing the church-state line, and could greatly affect American Jewish life, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, March 20, 2012
3. A Charter Network’s Emerging Imprint: Across South Florida Jewish institutions learn to live with – and embrace – Hebrew language schools, Julie Wiener, Jewish Week, March 27, 2012
4. Hebrew Charter School Spurs Dispute in Florida, Abby Goodnough, New York Times, August 24, 2007

Miscellaneous Related Links

As an Israeli-born Jew married to a Catholic, I am personally interested in the secularization of American Jewry and Jewish leaders’ responses to it. Here are some pieces I found intriguing as I slogged through putting together the post you are reading right now:

1. Across Differing Faiths, Shared Holidays, Michael Winerip, New York Times, December 17, 2008 This article has some good stats on the rise of interfaith marriage. It’s also a good read.
2. The Next Jew blog by drdan, August 13, 2011 There are some interesting thoughts on the Hebrew charter school trend here, from someone much more in on the Jewish scene than I. Worth reading.

Like this post? Or not? Let me know in the comments section. (In English, please.) And feel free to share it. Toda raba!

-Edit Barry

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Some Thoughts on Public Schooling and Segregated Cities

Cities cleave along racial and ethnic lines, and every city I’ve ever lived in proves it. When I grew up in Manhattan, there was Harlem, which was black. And East Harlem, which was Hispanic. And the Upper East and Upper West sides, which was where I and most of my friends lived. I’m white and they were, too. Over the years, I watched the formerly Jewish Lower East Side, where my grandpa used to own a textile shop with a handful of his brothers, turn Chinese. Later on I lived in Oakland, where the hills were white. There’s a Chinatown there, too.

In Baltimore the racial divide feels more extreme. Small numbers of young Jews are moving back to town, but the Jewish community at large worships outside the beltway. The Spanish speaking population is growing but per the 2010 U.S. Census only 4.2 percent of Baltimoreans are of Hispanic or Latino origin. The racial split is almost purely Black and White, 63.7 to 29.6 percent. And a fifth of people here live below the poverty line.

Baltimore City School demographics are another indication of how segregated and poor this city has become. This school year, 2011-2012, the public school student population is 86 percent black, though there are still individual neighborhood public schools – like the one in Hampden – where the racial breakdown looks more like that of a New England liberal arts college than of an HBCU. That is, the percentage of students of color in Baltimore’s predominantly white public schools is large enough that an elite college with similar numbers would tout itself as highly diverse. (Everything’s relative.) The big difference: 84 percent of kids in Baltimore City Schools come from low income backgrounds.

Given my private school background, my thoughts on public schooling are skewed. My thoughts on  integrated elementary schooling are just as funky. I was born in Israel. Before my first birthday, my mother took me from Tel Aviv to New York, where I attended a yeshiva from kindergarten through sixth grade. I learned all the things most public school students would learn. I also learned about my cultural heritage and Jewish identity.

My background colored my thinking about the reports and opinions in the New York Times a few weeks ago – they came out around the time of the May 17 anniversary of the decision in Brown v. Board – about what is effectively segregated public schooling in New York City schools. My thoughts went something like this: If the de facto segregation in predominantly Black or Latino or Asian elementary schools included curricula that engaged students in learning about their heritage and grappling with the meaning of their identity as Black or Latino or Chinese, wouldn’t our pluralistic society be better off? Is it enough to prepare students for “democratic citizenship” (if that is what public schools are doing) by teaching them about the Declaration of Independence and Constitution? Maybe we would have a more vibrant political culture if we also prepared students by teaching them about themselves.*

Learning about where I came from when I was young shaped my thinking for life. Is there a better place to do that than in school? Is whitewashing personal and cultural history part of the tragic legacy of the separate but equal logic that led to forced and legally enforced desegregation?

Can public schools teach us about our complex identities? Should they? Do they?** Can it be done in schools where integration is forced?*** I have many questions and few answers. So I read.

—

* Baltimore-based writer Stacey Patton’s piece on Black studies in the Chronicle of Higher Education also got me thinking about disciplined approaches to teaching identity. The piece kindled a well contained conflagration of controversy when a blogger for the CHE not only questioned the merit of dissertations in the field but outright ridiculed them based on their titles. She was fired.

** Hebrew charter schools are ruffling feathers in the private Jewish day school world. I attended a panel at the Project for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE) conference in 2010 that included the founder of the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Brooklyn. The school cannot teach prayers or engage students in religious study. They can teach Hebrew and cover topics such as Israeli independence. (Nevertheless, I found it online by searching “Jewish charter school.”) Washington D.C. approved a Hebrew language charter school on April 25, 2012.

*** In thinking about all this, I returned to the 20th century political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s controversial essay, “Reflections on Little Rock.” It’s difficult to make sense of her thinking without knowing something about her allegiance to distinctions between the private and public realms and her critique of the rise of the murky region she calls “the social,” but it’s worth a look.

Up next, some curated links to posts on and around these issues.